“Rules are made to be broken” — true. Also true is that breaking rules out of ignorance leads to disaster, while breaking them from knowledge can lead to the truly special. It can also lead to disaster, too. Don’t break rules unless you know them well enough to know when they shouldn’t apply.
Charles "Chuq" Von Rospach (contemp.) American science fiction writer and critic
(Unsourced)
Used by him as a sig line at least as early as Usenet article 61635@apple.Apple.COM on rec.arts.sf.written (Jan 1992).